


Come Forth From Iron

by Nice_Valkyrie



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Fingering, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Menstruation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 03:47:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19220929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nice_Valkyrie/pseuds/Nice_Valkyrie
Summary: A superior officer is, after all, responsible for the well-being of his subordinates. [Written for Royai Week 2019, prompt: “revival.”]





	Come Forth From Iron

**Author's Note:**

> Title from D.H. Lawrence's "[Almond Blossom](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44573/almond-blossom)," which is also concerned with revitalization.

 

For three months, Roy had continuously rediscovered that he was damnably inept at paperwork. The common forms seemed simple enough, but after several angry memos he’d learned to send everything past Riza first. The end result was fewer attempts returned to their office—and a harried, exhausted lieutenant.

There was a part of Roy, cold and calculating, that was aware overworking Riza in view of other officers could shift his reputation in potentially advantageous directions. But the truth was he’d been taxing her without even trying. They were frequently in the office past expected hours, trying to make up ground. Last night, they had been stuck until well after dark, fixing what Roy had belatedly realized was a very long personnel report done entirely in outdated, invalid formatting.

Today, Riza was rather sullen.

Roy knew what was between them, the promises they had made. But on days like this, when Riza barely looked at him and her few responses were clipped, he began to wonder if some resentment was only to be expected. After all, Riza was supporting him and shouldering the burden of all his mistakes alone.

He snuck a glance at her desk across from his, watching her scowl deepen as she worked on some report or other she’d deemed unacceptable. Something had to be done. He sighed internally and steeled himself.

“Is there anything bothering you, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir.”

Roy waited as she shuffled papers and found the next sheet.

“My hot water bottle failed catastrophically last night,” she finally said. “I’m beginning to think Colonel Cooper had a point about those rubber manufacturing regulations. Anyway, the pain makes it difficult to concentrate. Not impossible, of course, sir.”

Relief made Roy’s shoulders relax. “Is that all? Tell me what’s ailing you.”

Her smile was tight-lipped. “You aren’t familiar with it, sir.”

As he frowned at her, Riza’s expression twisted into a grimace. She bent forward slightly, hunching over her midsection, and suddenly Roy understood.

“Ah…” It wasn’t that he was entirely ignorant of womanly woes. His sisters had certainly referred to the subject often enough within his hearing, with varying degrees of coyness. But the details were foreign enough that he felt he had set foot in something cold, fraught, and well out of his depth.

“Please don’t let yourself be concerned,” said Riza, finding her place in the papers again.

Shame crept up Roy’s throat. Riza so rarely asked for anything that he had grown used to offering nothing. He hadn’t ever considered, for example, that she could be at the mercy of her own body’s workings this way. It seemed a vulnerability for women who were not her. “Your health is my business, too,” he said urgently. “How can I help?”

Riza frowned. “It’s not. And it’s nothing, sir.”

“That didn’t look like nothing.”

“I assure you I’m fine.”

“Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“Well, sir,” said Riza tersely, “an orgasm usually helps, but I don’t think you would approve of me doing _that_ in the office.”

A deafening silence followed this proclamation.

Roy swallowed. Riza’s stare was fierce, but she was looking across the room, unwilling or unable to meet his gaze. He recalled, with agonizing clarity, the shame of being a child ordered not to open a door, and then intruding upon a sibling naked anyway.

A few long, uneasy seconds later, Riza whipped her head back to the document on her desk. But she didn’t move to write, and as Roy watched, her lips began to tremble.

“I’m afraid not,” he said, unable to keep his voice from rising awkwardly. “Well—back to work, Lieutenant.”

***

Riza kept her head down. It had been unprofessional—to say the least—to divulge the subject of her discomfort in the first place, let alone suggest such a solution. She’d spoken unthinkingly, out of turn. At least, she thought sourly, they were equally surprised by her brashness.

She was tempted to blame the lapse on the pain. It squirmed in her midsection, a seething knot that intermittently _twisted_ with such fierceness that it stole her full attention. Enough distraction to allow her to be drawn in by the invitation of Roy’s silence.

But awareness lived uncomfortably alongside her sore muscles. Roy had asked so _casually_ , and in that moment Riza had wanted nothing more than to punish him for the transgression. She was more than capable of weathering her menses on her own. When she was younger, she’d had no means for hot water bottles, and made do with wet kitchen rags when privacy allowed. Roy had no right to speak to her that openly. He was concerned for her well-being as both her superior and her friend, but in the office they needed to enforce that boundary strictly.

And as she corrected his attempt at her quarterly behavior report, she finally found herself gnawing on his perception. Roy always read her so easily. If he put as much care into the details of his paperwork, many of their daily frustrations would melt away. Why couldn’t he intuit _that_ conclusion?

The afternoon passed in uncomfortable silence, Roy strolling in and out of the office for meetings without making eye contact. Riza bit her lip and refocused on the sheet in front of her. The pains lingered and throbbed with the pulse of her heartbeat, but _she_ could feign ignorance, too.

At four o’clock, another lieutenant returned the stack of acquisitions forms Roy had submitted a week earlier. When Riza opened it, there was hardly a line on any page that wasn’t sternly marked as needing revision.

“You must be joking,” she said out loud.

“Sorry,” said Roy sheepishly. “Ah, we might have to stay late again today…”

Riza kept her mouth carefully shut, this time because she knew _exactly_ what she would say.

Roy took just over half the pile and settled at his desk across from her. And then they worked.

On another occasion, Riza might have made more extensive changes, polished up the shakier parts of Roy’s appeals. Not today. She edited only what was noted, working swiftly as possible toward her goal. Across the room, Roy was silent, seemingly as resolved as she was. Whenever Riza glanced at him, he was engrossed in the papers, a slight frown on his face. The clock’s hands ticked onward, Riza’s cramps waxed and waned and waxed again, and Roy grew increasingly restless, shuffling his feet and leaving for breaks at a frequency that made Riza clench her jaw.

But an hour after she had expected to walk out the door, neither of them had finished their corrections, though she was somewhat farther along in her stack.

Roy leaned back in his chair, fiddling with his pen. “How are you feeling now?”

“Similarly, sir,” said Riza. Her hope of departing enough to visit the shops, and procuring a new hot water bottle that would enable her to sleep easily, was fading fast.

“I thought as much.” Roy hesitated, then set his pen down. “I’ve decided to assist you with your, your pain.”

Riza raised an eyebrow. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

“You already gave me the answer,” said Roy, getting to his feet. “I just need to...put some effort toward getting there.”

Riza froze as her mind caught up to his words. She looked up at him, a scoff already rising to her lips. But then Roy withdrew a pair of thin rubber gloves from his pocket, and her retort withered in her throat.

“This is an _office_ , sir,” she said weakly.

“Believe it or not, I have noticed that fact. I locked the door.”

“And you’re my commanding officer.”

“There _was_ a rather strapping young man in the medical office when I went to get these. I considered soliciting his services instead, but decided in the end that it was my responsibility.” He stretched them over his hands carefully, flexing his fingers to manage the tight fit. “ _Because_ I am your commanding officer. Understand?”

A strong cramp squeezed in Riza’s middle, and as she gritted her teeth against it, the promise of immediate relief was almost too tempting to resist. But she knew it had never been that easy for her. To accept Roy’s offer, throw her discipline to the wind like that, seemed utterly...careless.

But when the immediate pain began to dissipate, and Roy continued to wait calmly for her answer, a different understanding unfurled in her mind. Perhaps this wouldn’t be a lapse of discipline, but an exercise of it. A simple and direct recalibration of her mood.  

Did she trust Roy to have the same understanding?

Riza stood.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Wonderful. Now get on the desk.”

Riza unbuckled her belt as she walked to him, and then, before she could hesitate herself out of it, hauled her trousers off. As she pushed them aside with her foot, Roy’s gaze hesitated on the stained padding inside. Well, let him see. Her pulse beat loudly in her head, and the quiet, stale air was suddenly far too hot on her skin. Roy scooped up his papers and set them unceremoniously on the floor, and Riza lay back in the cleared space.

“You’ll need to open your legs.”

She hooked her heels on the edge of the desk. Roy advanced on her, and Riza felt a jolt of something not quite nervousness as his fingers mapped the insides of her thighs. They climbed higher, and the trickle of heat in her midsection swelled and surged to meet them. Arousal. The flesh Roy’s fingers pressed against was as sensitive and sore as the rest of her body. “Gently, sir, please.”

“Of course, Lieutenant.”

He parted her thicket of curls and spread her open. Now there was certainly nervousness. She knew exactly what mess Roy was seeing. In her younger days she had frequently balanced a hand mirror between her legs while menstruating, oddly thrilled by the unmistakable evidence of adulthood. Her blood had been her secret, known by no one else.

And now it was another secret she shared with Roy.

The first finger slid in like nothing. Roy let out a low, approving breath.

“Don’t be flattered, sir.”

“It was an instinctive reaction,” he muttered. He pulled out the finger and showed it to her, streaked red to the second knuckle. “Well, at least you weren’t lying just to get a favor from me.”

“Would you do this if I _had_ lied?”

“Oh, I can’t be sure.” Between Riza’s legs, the finger dipped in again and began a slow slide in and out. “I’m sympathetic to a spontaneous need for orgasm, but without adequate reason, I suppose it ought to be a strictly extracurricular activity.”

His exploration was nearly scientific in its precision, changing in response to the way Riza’s leg jumped or her breath caught. The throbbing in her abdomen remained, but other sensations rose in her body: heat; need; tender, flushed skin begging to be touched. “I’m glad you found my circumstances compelling.”

Roy’s brow furrowed slightly as he pushed another finger inside her, nodding to himself as he worked her open. With his other hand, he slid the hood of her clit back.

“ _Quite_ compelling, Lieutenant.”

Riza tried, unsuccessfully, to quiet her gasp as Roy pulled his fingers out and slid them up. His touch was feather-light, flicking over the swollen nub in a way that was more tease than stimulation. Too soon, he dipped back down to penetrate her again, more forcefully.

Another gloved finger returned to her clit, dry this time, the sticky drag of the rubber oddly electric. The friction sent shocks like pricking needles down the nerves of her legs. It was nearly too much—but then the pressure lessened, and Riza groaned as the heat of the _just-there just-right_ touch flared inside her.

“And you thought I wouldn’t be familiar with the area,” Roy chided her.

Riza laughed, but the sound faded into a soft, contented sigh. She usually found bearing a man’s full attention difficult. If she’d been fucking Roy—now _that_ thought brought new warmth to her face—she could have kissed his neck, pulled his hair, let her nails scratch his back as she clung to him and moaned. But this was entirely new: methodical, procedural, even medical. Free of expectations.

“Stay with me, Lieutenant,” Roy murmured.

The hand inside her sped up. The need building higher and hotter subsumed her body’s pains. Aching muscles, cramping insides—they were nothing when he touched her like that. All that mattered was the relentless work of his damnably adept hands, and the throbbing peak of flesh his finger manipulated with such ease.

Riza panted as the touch on her clit became sterner and faster. Blood didn’t embarrass her, either. Knowing what Roy was seeing and feeling, and _seeking_ so openly—

This time, when Riza’s body began clenching, she never wanted it to end.

***

After the last pulses faded away, and Riza’s body relaxed, Roy withdrew his fingers. “Say ‘thank you,’” he instructed.

“Don’t be ridiculous, sir.”

Grinning, Roy peeled the gloves off. “Hey, you can’t blame me for wanting praise.” After a moment’s consideration, he buried them within the papers of the trash can. Thankfully, the manufacturing standards on _that_ rubber appeared to be perfectly fine. “It felt good to do something right for once.”

Riza sat up and pulled her trousers back on. The movements were brisk and efficient, but her face was thoughtful. “Back to work, sir, I suppose?”

Roy groaned. He had nearly managed to forget the mountain of paperwork, cleared off for Riza’s benefit. It was a shame she was unlikely to accept the proposal of a second orgasm.  

The edges of Riza’s lips twitched in the smile she refused to give him. “Think of it as more chances to do something right,” she said dryly, returning to her own desk.

The warm familiarity of her teasing glowed reassuringly in Roy’s heart. Before she could sit, he waved his hand at her, shaking his head. “Go home, Lieutenant. Take care of whatever you need to. I can handle this on my own now.”

“Of course not, sir,” said Riza calmly as she sat. “I would rather stay late than have to come in early.”

Roy grinned ruefully. Riza dropped her focus back to the acquisitions forms, picking up her pen.

“Besides,” she added after a moment, “I can’t imagine what I would do with my time if I didn’t have your work.”

 

 


End file.
